Dear Ross McMillan, Please Tell The Truth

Since my whistleblower story broke last week, both ForestEthics Canada and Tides Canada have tried to come forward with the truth in different ways. This morning, Ross McMillan, the CEO of Tides Canada (the organization that was threatened by the Prime Minister's Office), has an opinion piece in The Tyee where he calls for an "Open, Honest Debate about our Energy Future." In the article he stands by his contention that my story was "inaccurate" but that I had "the right idea." He doesn't come clean with the actual facts about what happened - a prerequisite for a truly honest debate.

Whatever the "right idea" I had was, it must have been pretty disconcerting to Mr. McMillan, because he fired me just after I had sworn my affidavit, and before I had gone public with my story.

As I've said time and again, Mr. McMillan is the only one who knows exactly what the Prime Minister's Office said to him, and right now he's staying silent.

As I swore in my affidavit, Mr. McMillan told his colleagues that the Prime Minister's Office labelled ForestEthics Canada an "Enemy of the Government of Canada" and an "Enemy of the People of Canada." His friends and closest advisors have said it, my former colleagues have said it, but Ross isn't saying it, for fear the Prime Minister's Office will come after his charity.

Here's an open challenge to Ross: Ross, please tell the truth. Plain and simple. What really happened? Why don't you share the information that would be so valuable for citizens working to hold this government to account?

Please do the right thing, and tell the truth. Let us know what the real facts are.

You can send a supportive email or tweet to Mr. McMillan, urging him to share his story with his fellow Canadian citizens:

@Ross_McMillan alison.henning@tidescanada.org (his communications person)

Listen: “EnemyGate” Radio Interview Explains Growing Citizens’ Movement to Hold Harper Government to Account

Whistleblower Andrew Frank’s interview (LISTEN NOW) with CKNW’s Simi Sara Show, explaining the incredible citizen's movement that is taking shape to hold the government to account and reveal the truth behind the Prime Minister's Office labeling Canadian citizens "enemies" and "adversaries" of the Government of Canada, and "Enemies of the People of Canada."

EnemyGate

That's what Margaret Atwood, one of the world's most accomplished writers, is calling this scandal on Twitter. I trust Ms. Atwood with finding the right words, and now it's up to Canadians to find the truth. Lot's more coming and planned, but in the mean time I want to share that the original open letter is 300 reads away from 60,000. That's since Tuesday morning! Please keep sharing it. It is a good introduction to this whole affair, and it is building a citizens' movement to reveal the truth behind EnemyGate.

There are lot's of angles in this story, but for me, there are two key questions that Canadian citizens need answered, and we won't rest until we get straight answers:

Question #1: Have you, or any member of the Prime Minister’s office, or any member of your government, used language to describe any critic whatsoever of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline or Canadian oil sands development in general, using the words “Enemy,” or “Enemies” of the Government of Canada or “Enemy,” or “Enemies” of the people of Canada?

Question #2: Has your government made any efforts whatsoever, to restrict the ability of any civil society group, whatsoever, and in any fashion, whatsoever, that is registered as an intervenor in the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, to participate to its fullest ability, and to secure its funding as a charitable entity, as it has done in Canada for close to a decade?

Use this tool to find your Member of Parliament's email address and then send them these two questions to ask the government. If they are Conservative, ask them directly. Make sure to CC Prime Minister Harper: pm@pm.gc.ca Please send any responses you do get to andrew "at" andrewfrank.ca

In the meantime, let's get #EnemyGate trending on Twitter. Canadians want the truth.

ForestEthics Confirms Whistleblower Andrew Frank’s Account of Harper Government’s Attempts to Silence Citizen Critics

Organization confirms it was singled out by Harper government. Co-founder vows, “I will not be silenced.” VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA (January 26, 2012) – ForestEthics has sent a statement to supporters confirming the veracity of Andrew Frank’s claims that the Government of Canada targeted the environmental group.

In an email sent to supporters yesterday afternoon (January 25), ForestEthics co-founder, Valerie Langer confirms the veracity of Andrew Frank’s claims:

“While a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office denied using this language [An Enemy of the Government of Canada], he refused to comment when asked whether ForestEthics was targeted by the government.² ForestEthics was targeted by the government.² There’s a good reason they wouldn’t comment: it’s true.”

The complete text of Langer’s statement to supporters is available here:

http://andrewfrank.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/ForestEthics-Statement.pdf

“I appreciate ForestEthics’ awkward attempts to bring the truth to light,” says Andrew Frank. “I understand that they are under enormous pressure from Tides Canada, which itself is terrified of government reprisals against its funding.”

Frank continues, “Today we are one step closer to having the full truth and nothing but the truth, with respect to the language the Harper government has used to describe Canadian critics of the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil tanker and pipeline project. We’re getting close to the truth, but more work is needed.”

Frank has issued two questions to citizens, reporters and opposition MPs to ask the Prime Minister’s Office directly:

Question #1: Have you, or any member of the Prime Minister’s office, or any member of your government, used language to describe any critic whatsoever of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline or Canadian oil sands development in general, using the words “Enemy,” or “Enemies” of the Government of Canada or “Enemy,” or “Enemies” of the people of Canada?

Question #2: Has your government made any efforts whatsoever, to restrict the ability of any civil society group, whatsoever, and in any fashion, whatsoever, that is registered as an intervenor in the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, to participate to its fullest ability, and to secure its funding as a charitable entity, as it has done in Canada for close to a decade?

Andrew Frank’s original open letter to Canadians has been read more than 55,000 times since Tuesday morning (January 24), sparking an online movement to reveal the truth and hold the government to account. A cause page has been growing steadily with citizens vowing to take action to reveal the truth of the Harper government's contempt for the basic rights of Canadian citizens, including freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

Contact Information: Andrew Frank Former Senior Communications Manager, ForestEthics Canada Office: 604-215-7875 Cell: 604-367-2112 www.andrewfrank.ca

Canadians Want The Truth, And We're Going to Get It

Dear fellow Canadian citizens,

If there is anything clear from yesterday's whirlwind of viral online discussion and media coverage, based on the sworn affidavit and open letter I issued to Canadian citizens, it is that the truth has not yet been told. Together we can change that.

Those named in my sworn affidavit, including the Government of Canada and Tides Canada, have not answered the fundamental question that I was fired for asking: Did the Prime Minister's Office attempt to pressure a charitably-funded environmental organization, critical of the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil tanker and pipeline project, and in doing so did it label its own citizens, "Enemies of the Government of Canada," and "Enemies of the People of Canada?"

In interviews, both Tides Canada and the Government have used weasel words like "inaccurate" or "we don't comment on meetings with government" or "we deny these statements," to dodge the question.

Most damning is this quote from an article by the Canadian Press:

Andrew MacDougall, spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office, said none of the statements attributed to the government is accurate.

"The Prime Minister's Office denies making any of the allegations or saying any of the things that are outlined in that statement," he said.

He would not comment when asked if either Tides Canada or ForestEthics had been targeted by the government.

"No comment" speaks louder than words. It's a baby step towards the truth. To help Prime Minister Harper and his tongue-tied spokesman tell the full truth and nothing but the truth, here is a list of questions that I propose media, opposition MPs and Canadian citizens ask this government over and over and over again until we get a clear answer. I apologize for the very precise wording, but my dad was a lawyer, and he taught me the importance of using precise language to uncover the truth:

1. Have you, or any member of the Prime Minister's office, or any member of your government, used language to describe any critic whatsoever of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline or Canadian oil sands development in general, using the words "Enemy," or "Enemies" of the Government of Canada or "Enemy," or "Enemies" of the people of Canada?

2. Has your government made any efforts whatsoever, to restrict the ability of any civil society group, whatsoever, and in any fashion, whatsoever, that is registered as an intervenor in the National Energy Board's Joint Review Panel for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, to participate to its fullest ability, and to secure its funding as a charitable entity, as it has done in Canada for close to a decade?

3. Have you, or any member of the Prime Minister's office, or any member of your government or the Conservative Party of Canada instructed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or any other investigative service or individual, to monitor or interact with covertly, or otherwise, any member or employee of any civil society organization, or First Nation, whatsoever, that is critical of, or publicly opposed to the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline or Canadian oil sands development in general?

In order to give the media and opposition MPs (as well as our fellow citizens) that extra "umph" to get out there and hold this government to account, I've created an online "Cause" page. It's a completely non-partisan way to channel the energy of this nerve that's been struck in the Canadian public's sense of decency, and to use it to reveal the truth.

Please join it and share it with the same ferocity you showed in supporting me yesterday.

I plan to personally reply to every note and email that has been sent to me, and your response has been overwhelming and uplifting. I have never been scared or fearful in this whole process (because I knew what I was doing was right), but I can say I have never felt so powerful as I did yesterday, knowing my fellow citizens were standing shoulder to shoulder with me in holding this government to account. When you threaten one of us, you threaten all of us.

We've got work ahead of us, but we can all smell the truth, and we're just a few short steps away from having it told, and holding this government to account.

This is a citizens' movement. Take it where you will.

Sincerely and best regards,

Andrew.

Whistleblower Claims Prime Minister's Office Tried to Silence Enbridge Gateway Pipeline Critic

Affidavit claims Prime Minister's Office labelled environmental group an "Enemy of the Government of Canada" and an, "Enemy of the People of Canada".

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Jan. 24, 2012) - The Prime Minister's Office tried to cut funding of a registered intervenor in the Enbridge Pipeline Review, calling ForestEthics Canada an, "Enemy of the Government of Canada" and an, "Enemy of the People of Canada", according to allegations detailed in a sworn affidavit, dated January 23, 2012.

Sworn by Andrew Frank, former Senior Communications Manager with ForestEthics Canada, and an instructor in the Environmental Protection Technology program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, the affidavit cites three senior managers with Tides Canada and ForestEthics, as well as personal email correspondence.

"Today, I am taking the extraordinary step of risking my career, my reputation and my personal friendships, to act as a whistleblower and expose the undemocratic and potentially illegal pressure the Harper government has apparently applied to silence critics of the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil tanker/pipeline plan," says Frank.

The affidavit alleges the Prime Minister's Office has made an attempt to influence the charitable funding of ForestEthics Canada, a registered intervenor in the National Energy Board's federal review process for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

According to the affidavit, the Prime Minister's Office has informed Tides Canada CEO, Ross McMillan, that it considers ForestEthics to be an "Enemy of the Government of Canada", and an "Enemy of the people of Canada", and that unless Tides Canada alters its charitable support of ForestEthics, there will be consequences.

"Canadian citizens will be shocked to learn that their own government is labelling critics of the Enbridge oil tanker/pipeline project, 'Enemies of the Government of Canada'," says Mr. Frank. "When a government starts labelling its own citizens 'enemies', it has lost its moral authority to govern."

Frank adds, "If the Prime Minister's Office is working behind the scenes to silence voices of opposition and legitimate criticism, how can Canadians have any confidence in this review process? Canadians should be deeply concerned about this information, and I invite those named in my affidavit to sign sworn affidavits attesting to whether or not this is the truth."

Mr. Frank has also written an open letter to the citizens of Canada free for reprint by media:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/79228736/Whistleblower-s-Open-Letter-to-Canadians

Contact Information: Andrew Frank Former Senior Communications Manager, ForestEthics Canada Office: 604-215-7875 Cell phone: 604-367-2112 www.andrewfrank.ca

Independent Poll Shows Plurality of British Columbians Oppose Enbridge Gateway Pipeline: 46% Against, 41% In Favour

‘Do you think the provincial government should support the Northern Gateway pipeline to carry Alberta crude oil to Kitimat to be shipped by tanker to Asia to be refined, or not?’

British Columbia Issues Poll (Forum Research) (20111216) (Final)(1) (Download Now) Northern Gateway Pipeline Question (Download Now)

That was the question asked by Forum Research, which did independent polling with a random, telephone sample of 1,045 British Columbians on December 15th, 2011. The results are telling:

Do not support the pipeline: 46% Support the pipeline: 41% No opinion: 13%

Among Northern British Columbians, opposition to the pipeline is even stronger:

Do not support the pipeline: 51% Support the pipeline: 41% No opinion: 9%

These results confirm what many pipeline critics have been saying (full disclosure, I work part-time with ForestEthics, a registered review panel intervenor), that yesterday's reported online poll commissioned by Enbridge was bogus. When you reach real people, randomly, on the phone, you get real answers.

Stephen Harper has been hinting today that he might be planning to circumvent due process by attempting to ram the pipeline through, public review be damned.

These numbers reveal the potential of real political consequences for a heavy-handed approach. Perhaps that's why BC Premier Clark has thus far refused to take a position.

Plastic-Free 2012

I usually have a bunch of personal New Year's resolutions that I'm lucky if I remember by the time a new year rolls around. This year I won't have the luxury of absent-mindedness. Linnet and I have signed-on to be part of a documentary, following 12 households in the Lower Mainland who are going "plastic-free" for a year. I put "plastic-free" in quotations, because we are allowed to create some personal exceptions (e.g. health-related products like medicine in a plastic bottle, or toothpaste in a tube). The bottom line is that apart from a few exceptional items, we aren't allowed to collect any new plastic. Any plastic that we do acquire (e.g. someone sends us a gift that has plastic, or we accidentally buy some unwittingly) we have to keep for a visual record for the entire year. How's that for a not-so-private New Year's resolution?

Truth be told, I'm slightly apprehensive and excited about this new adventure. I'm apprehensive because plastic is so ubiquitous in our society that it can be difficult to avoid (and I have a traditional weakness for potato chips...which I'm going to have to learn to make by hand), but I'm also excited to be doing something positive and engaging with respect to the legacy and footprint we're living and leaving behind.

It's not that we think plastic is evil, it's actually a pretty amazing and durable material with important applications (healthcare comes to mind), but the problem is that we take this incredibly durable material and make it into disposable items that we use and throwaway on a daily basis, or that we use to store or even heat food in (plastic does contain scary chemicals you don't want in your body). That's the problem and the point of this exercise - to eliminate the casual disposable use of plastic.

Plastic is connected to all kinds of nasty environmental and health issues. My mom and her friends recently tossed their Tupperware due to fears about plastic and cancer, and more and more people are learning about the Great Pacific garbage patch and the immediate effects plastic has on animals like Albatross, which mistake disposable plastic like bottle caps and lighters, for food.

As I've previously blogged, plastic does not biodegrade – literally every scrap that has ever been produced in history lives-on somewhere in some form, either as buried plastic bags in landfills or as tiny particles of plastic bobbing in the ocean, working their way up the food chain. It’s a legacy that suddenly makes a plastic-wrapped sandwich or plastic take-out fork look a lot less appealing.

At a minimum, this new resolution will mean that we're living a healthier life, and having a much smaller environmental footprint. Reflecting on a recent article by George Monbiot, I'd say that we're restricting our freedom to consume plastic, in order to protect the freedom of other people, animals and ourselves, who would suffer from its ill effects.

Doing away with disposable plastic necessitates a shift in diet towards fresher, healthier, more local food in general. I'm excited about homemade bread and hand-cranked pasta, and while some of these things will take more time to prepare, others don't. For the ones that do, it feels like time well spent, slowing down, connecting to our food and the seasons, spending time together, and all that other blah, blah, blah, that's actually true.

We're also making connections with other folks who are trying to go plastic-free, and that means a new community is taking shape (which can only be a good thing). Folks are already swapping recipes for crackers and sharing plastic-free shopping tips.

As our adventure takes shape, I'll post on the experience. Today we purged plastic from our kitchen and toiletries, and yesterday we found a source for plastic-free bulk toilet paper (100% recycled with 40% Post-Consumer Waste) - it seems to be just as green and even cheaper than the environmentally-friendly stuff we've all been wiping our asses with.

On that note, Happy New Year! Wish us luck in 2012 (or better yet, join us)!

Thesis Defended!

I formally submitted my Masters thesis to the Simon Fraser University library last week. I officially defended it on December 9th in front of a great mix of friends, colleagues and professionals from the fields of environment and ecology.

Man, it feels good to be done!

If you're interested in subjects like public engagement, climate change, environmental communication, or science communication, you'll find lots of useful and practical findings and recommendations inside.

Please don't hesitate to drop me a line if you're interested in further discussion of my research.

Abstract: This case study investigates the role of the intermediary in public engagement on climate change, through interviews with twenty Canadian presenters of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. The study explores the relationship between presenters, audiences and The Climate Project Canada (recently renamed the Climate Reality Project Canada), the organization tasked with training and coordinating presenters. Investigating the development and delivery of climate change presentations, the study looks at each unique phase of presenting, including preparation, personal edits and affective engagement with the public. Areas of emphasis include communication of climate change science, spokesperson credibility, localization, rhetorical strategies, humour, narrative and presentation of solutions. The study concludes with recommendations for how to develop more effective forms of public engagement on climate change.

Worm Composting!

We're about two-weeks into a trial of the new continuous-flow indoor worm composter I built for our red wiggler compost worms. Seems to be working well! Our goal is to get to a point where we're composting 100% of our food waste (except fish and meat-related scraps), and to use the rich vermicompost for our garden. It's all about transforming our waste stream from something that contributes to landfills and climate change (when food rots anaerobically in landfills, it can produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas), into a nutrient stream that helps produce food in our garden, and keeps our indoor plants healthy!

It's also an important part of our efforts to go "plastic-free" by cutting-out the need for garbage liners (more on that in a future post, let's just say it involves a documentary and a one-year commitment...we're excited and a little nervous!).

The plans for the continuous flow composter, which I modified very slightly to make it longer and wider, are easy to follow and available on instructables here (amazing site!), c/o Amy Youngs. Ms. Youngs is an Ohio-based artist and Associate Professor of Art at Ohio State University. She does cool stuff with "bioart" including this "digestive table" which was the creative spark for the more hardy "worm bag" that our composter is based on.

The idea behind this design is that the worms will stay near the top of the bag, where the food is, and the finished compost gravitates towards the bottom of the bag, where a tie string can be undone, emptying the compost into the blue bin. And this isn't just any compost, this is vermicompost, richer and higher in plant-beneficial microbes and nutrients than regular compost. You can even make a tea from the stuff and spray it directly onto plants to improve their growth and repel pests.

Best of all, the design is unobtrusive and with the natural wood and glass lid, even kind of attractive. I'll update you on our trial as we get closer to harvesting our first compost.

In the meantime, if you're interested in trying worm composting yourself, the City of Vancouver sells plastic composting bins and offers quick trainings at the compost demonstration garden, operated by City Farmer. When it comes time to buy worms, the man with the best prices, the best worms and the best advice in town, is Bintoro Gunadi (a very friendly man, who loves his worms and knows them inside out...he's got a PhD in soil ecology).

As for worm composting itself, I've only been doing it for a couple months now, but I gotta say, I love the little critters  - they're like pets, and I find myself looking at our food scraps post-dinner and thinking, "What will they find the tastiest?" Truth is, they like a lot of things, and are prolific eaters. They need to be fed at least once a week.

Here wormy, wormy!